NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 30, 2025--
In a digital age marked by algorithmic polarization and growing online hostility, AddressHate announces the appointment of renowned linguist and antisemitism expert Dr. Matthias J. Becker as Senior Research Advisor. This strategic addition deepens the think tank’s interdisciplinary mission: to decode, disrupt, and ultimately dismantle the viral dynamics of hate speech in online environments.
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Dr. Becker is the founder and principal investigator of Decoding Antisemitism, a pioneering European research initiative that combines expert linguistic annotation, AI-based analysis, and cross-national discourse studies to expose antisemitic patterns in digital media. He is also a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, where his academic work bridges the fields of cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, and social media studies.
“We’re building a coalition of minds that can not only expose hate, but also translate that understanding into real, systemic change,” said Joshua Laterman, founder of AddressHate. “Matthias brings the kind of rigor, compassion, and courage this moment requires. He helps us see what others overlook: the coded language of hate hiding in plain sight.”
Trained in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Literature at Freie Universität Berlin, Dr. Becker has spent over a decade analyzing the mechanics of antisemitic rhetoric across media landscapes. His influential monograph, Antisemitism in Reader Comments, published in English by Springer Nature in 2021, explores how antisemitic tropes and historical analogies subtly persist in British and German discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dr. Becker is also the coauthor (with Nima Veiseh) of AddressHate’s seminal White Paper “Confronting Digital Hate: An Interdisciplinary Tech-Driven Framework to Understand and Counter Online Antisemitism and Hate”.
“Hate speech rarely announces itself. In the digital age, it often enters disguised — through irony, rhetorical deflection, or historical analogy — and is amplified by algorithms indifferent to context,” said Nima Veiseh, Founding Director of AddressHate, who started his career as a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. “As social media and artificial intelligence increasingly mediate our public discourse, the need to decode these implicit forms of hostility becomes urgent. Dr. Becker’s work equips us with analytical frameworks to detect and disrupt these patterns before they become culturally embedded. At AddressHate, we are building and empowering an interdisciplinary, apolitical community of researchers and practitioners who can inform sustainable, human-centered governance of digital spaces.”
In October 2024, Becker edited and released the DA Lexicon, an open-access reference work with over 45 chapters analyzing the evolving language of online Jew-hatred. Within weeks of publication, it had been downloaded over 190,000 times — a signal of both urgency and public hunger for deeper understanding.
AddressHate: Translating Research into Public Good
Formerly an initiative of the Laterman Family Foundation, AddressHate is an independent New York-based think tank confronting digital hate through rigorous research, policy engagement, public education, and creative interventions. The organization is building a multilingual, interdisciplinary, and intercultural network of scholars, technologists, artists, and civic leaders committed to eradicating online hate while protecting freedom of expression.
This appointment marks a key milestone as AddressHate prepares to release its first round of public datasets and launch an academic journal focused on digital discourse and social harm in 2026. Becker will serve under Director Nima Veiseh as a founding member of the journal’s team and will help steer the organization’s AI ethics and language annotation protocols.
Matthias J. Becker, Senior Research Advisor at AddressHate
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
